Airey Neave was born in 1916. Educated at Eton
and Merton College, Oxford,
he achieved a law degree and embarked in a career at the Bar.
Neave
joined the British Army on the outbreak
of the Second World War. Sent to France
he was wounded at Calais in 1940 and taken prisoner by the German
Army. After escaping from his first POW camp he was sent to the
maximum security prison at Colditz Castle.
In
January 1942 Neave became the first British officer to escape from
Colditz. On his return to England he helped to train air crews in
the means of escape in occupied territory. He was also recruited into
M19, a branch of M16 responsible for the support of the French
Resistance. As a result of his war service Neave was awarded the
Croix de Guerre.
In 1946 Neave was a member of the Nuremberg war crimes team. He joined
the Conservative Party and in the
1951 General Election was elected to the
House of Commons. Neave held several junior
government posts before suffering a heart attack in 1959.
Neave
wrote several books about his war experiences including They
Have Their Exits (1953), Saturday
at M19 (1969) and The
Flames of Calais (1976).
Neave
remained a backbencher in Parliament until helping Margaret Thatcher
to depose Edward Heath as party leader in 1975. Neave was rewarded
by being appointed as head of Thatcher's private office.
When
the Conservative Party came to power
in 1979 Neave was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Airey Neave was
killed by an INLA car bomb outside the House
of Commons on 30th March 1979.
(1)
Douglas Hurd, The Guardian
(16th March 2002)
After the war, his interest increasingly focused on politics. Thus
developed the Airey Neave who became my political neighbour in Oxfordshire,
the soft-voiced MP for Abingdon, helpful and pleasant in manner, but
always keeping his inner thoughts in reserve. By the time I knew him
he had lived through a modest but competent ministerial career, cut
short by a heart attack in 1959. A strange story surrounds this setback.
It was said that when Airey Neave told the chief whip that his doctor
had said he must resign, Ted Heath said curtly, "Well, that's
the end of your career". This curt rebuff is said to explain
Neave's deep hostility to Heath in later years.
The story
does neither man credit. After examining the evidence, Routledge rightly
rejects it. But for whatever reason, when it came to the point in
1975, Neave was convinced that Ted Heath must go. Margaret Thatcher
shrewdly made him her campaign manager. Most managers cry up the chances
of their candidate in order to create a bandwagon of support. Airey
Neave, reading the mood of the parliamentary party, persuaded a good
many MPs to vote for Thatcher not in order to elect her but to give
Heath a sharp warning that he must change his ways.
(2)
Edward
Heath, The
Course of My Life (1988)
Airey Neave told me that
he believed the time had come for me to resign. He
informed me that he was in a position to guarantee that I would be
given a top job in
the Shadow Cabinet or in any Conservative government which
should follow it. I thanked him, but replied that I was not proposing
to resign and, in
any case, would not be prepared to accept covert deals of
this kind from him or anybody else. Neave was a shrewd tactician.
I am convinced that
I would have won the first ballot if he had not taken charge
of the Thatcher campaign. On polling day and, indeed, during the whole
campaign, he told colleagues that he was not expecting Mrs Thatcher
to win in the first
round, but hoped specific individuals would vote for her
in order to prevent my majority from becoming too great. I was told
afterwards of the Conservative Members who fell for this cunning manoeuvre.
(3)
Norman Tebbit, New Statesman
(11th March 2002)
At Oxford, Neave was more occupied by traditional student activities
such as partying than by politics or studies, but with a frantic last-minute
struggle, he achieved a law degree and then embarked on a career at
the Bar. He had joined the Territorial Army at Oxford, convinced that
he at least should fight for King and Country, and he enlisted with
a searchlight regiment just days before Chamberlain's ultimatum to
Hitler precipitated the declaration of war. Posted to France, he was
soon parted from his searchlights and took command of an ill-assorted
and randomly equipped troop of soldiers in the battle of Calais, with
the aim of delaying the German assault on the beaches at Dunkirk.
It all but cost him his life and, seriously wounded, he was captured.
From the
first, his thoughts were of escape, and his failed attempts led to
incarceration in the "escape-proof" prison at Colditz. There
is no black-and-white account of fearless British officers and dunderheaded
black-hearted German jailers, and the Germans mostly emerge as decent
men, frequently resisting extreme provocation by their British and
Allied prisoners, although some recaptured escapees were unforgivably
executed.
Colditz,
the prison for bad boys, became an academy and virtual hothouse for
recidivist escapees. Accompanied by a Dutch prisoner, Neave made a
"home run" on his second attempt to break out. Escaping
from Germany into the safety of Switzerland, he made the dangerous
run across France, over the Pyrenees into Spain, and the far from
entirely safe journey from Gibraltar back home. He was soon recruited
into MI9, a branch of MI6 responsible for the support of the mainly
French and Dutch Resistance fighters operating the escape lines for
POWs and aircrew evading capture after being shot down. As the war
ended, Neave joined the Nuremberg war crimes team and served the indictments
on the Nazi leaders.
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